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How to Break Bad News to Your SEO Clients

This entry was written by one of our members and submitted to our YouMoz section.The author's views below are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz.

It is an unfortunate, but ultimately unavoidable situation for any independent professional: something went wrong, and now you need to break the bad news to your client. In the SEO world, this can happen for a multitude of reasons. From a situation as simple as you being late with your deliverables due to unforeseen circumstances to much bigger problems, such as loss in rankings because of algorithmic changes, or worse yet, penalization of a client's site, there are dozens of things that can go wrong in any given project or campaign.

Breaking bad news to your client is always going to suck, but there are a number of things you can do to minimize the damage, maintain your relationship with your client, and move forwards:

Don't go into denial. When you initially find a problem, or are presented with one, be up front about it from the very beginning. Get past the bad news quickly and start working towards a solution. This will minimize the amount of time the problem has to cause damage, and maximize the amount of time you have to start taking action.

Be honest and progressive. If you are to work through the problem and salvage your relationship with the client, honesty is going to be important. If the problem was on your end, you're going to need to own up to it, however unpleasant of an experience that may be. If the problem was on the client's end, you're going to need to be honest as well so that they can address the issues internally and ensure that these problems don't continue to happen.

Have an explanation for the problem. Don't go into your clients office or pick up the phone empty handed. The first question your client will ask is "How did this happen?" Having an explanation helps you figure out what steps to take moving forwards, and what changes you can make to avoid these problems in the future.

Have a proposed solution. This is crucial. Soften your bad news with some upside. If you present a problem with no answer and no hope of finding one, it's going to be hard to walk out of the meeting on a positive note. Research the issue in depth. Don't just have an idea of how you can rectify the situation, but have an organized plan of attack that you can present and put into action immediately.

Be realistic about the effects of the setback. Don't compound one mistake with another. Is the problem going to affect your workflow? Will you be running behind schedule trying to fix it, and will that affect the rest of your work? Be up front about these issues so you can avoid having to break even more bad news to your client in the near future.

These tips will help you confront and resolve your issue, but what about preventing these situations from happening in the first place?

Be transparent. The best way to minimize your risk is to be completely open about what you are doing and what the potential effects of your actions could be. Present your client with all of the possible strategic options and the risk involved with each option. At the end of the day, you're going to need to make a recommendation, but if your client is involved in the decision-making process, you share the responsibility with them.

Minimize risk. Don't want to have to tell your client that his site got penalized? Don't want to have to explain that because of an algorithm update, the low quality links you've been building got devalued, and they fell off the face of the Earth for their prized keywords? Then avoid inherently risky strategies from the beginning. Build your website according to Google's best practices and build only high quality links, and you'll never need to have these types of conversations with your clients.

Manage expectations. The most important thing I've learned in my SEO career is that whether you're working in-house or as a consultant, you're going to need to manage your SEO clients' expectations. Consistently under promise and over deliver, and your clients will always be satisfied. Don't promise #1 rankings. Tell them that first page results would be encouraging, and wow them with #1 results.

Got a story about a time you had to break bad news to a client? What was it, how did you deal with it, and how did everything turn out in the end?

About Anthony Mangia —
Anthony Mangia is the President and CEO of Mangia Marketing, an NYC SEO Company, as well as Local SEO Services NYC, a local SEO provider. He has more than 5 years of experience helping companies, both small and large, achieve their SEO, Paid Search, Social Media, and Affiliate Marketing goals. Follow him on Twitter at @Aignam.

32 Comments

Being on the client side of this issue, I truly appreciate this post. Honesty isn't just the best policy, it's the ONLY policy. Most of us do understand that no one has a magic SEO wand.

Many of us are becoming self-taught web designers, SEO gurus, etc. for no other reason than to combat the growing level of dishonesty we experience with design/developers/SEO providers. With all that I've had to learn (which I recommend to other business owners, by the way), I could practically change careers. At the very least, the learning curve is ridiculous, just to be able to determine whether or not someone you are paying is being honest in their work.

This post is awesome. Integrity over BS...what a good business is built on.

I know what you mean, Dubs, but I think it's important to differentiate between straight up lying to the client and offering a conservative outlook. The idea isn't to mislead, but rather to keep their expectations manageable and set yourself up to show results that both you and the client will be happy with. Realistic goals are certainly the name of the game - all I'm saying is that I'd rather err on the low end of the range and call up the client with good news than set really ambitious expectations and fall short.

The problem comes when your idea of "realistic" goals are not seen as impacting the client's business in a significant way. Sales do weigh into this, I'm afraid. When that happens, you have to make the decision to only service clients who agree to those terms. Otherwise it's a recipe for disaster.

Depending upon how bad or damaging your news is going to be for a client you can either put yourself forward or the person who is closest to the client or who is an expert in maintaining public relations. I generally prefer the latter.

2. If you have to deliver a bad news than deliver it, only to those who really really need to know about it like your immediate reporting person and the person who represents the client. Let them decide whether or not to propagate these news and to whom and how. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Don't make the bad news worse by telling to everybody from colleagues to boss's boss, senior management, client's boss/staff. Often your manager or the person who represents the client can help you in mitigating the -ve effect of your bad news depending upon your present relationship with him/her and past successes.

I once went overbudget on a client PPC campaign. I spent almost twice the allocated budget. This was horrible and i thought how i am going to explain all this. There was absolutely no reason other than my own negligence. Anyways i have to break this earth shattering news. So i just called the client and broke the news in a apologetic tone. I didn't say a word in my defence and gave her the reassurance that it won't happen again. Whatever bad is going to happen, will happen. All you can do is try your best. She later somehow managed this issue internally. Had i gone straight to her boss or senior management, the situation would most likely be, not in my favour as they don't know me well and care little about my past successes with their business.

Transparency is good and this should be the part of your process, I do agree the fact that when it’s a bad news just break it don’t hide the news or else this will more likely to get worst!

The great part of the article that I prefer while breaking the bad news in front of the client is to propose them with the risk free solution and this actually resolve their half problem! Because terminating the contract is not going to get them out of the danger but after every bad news the 1st question is how to get out of it! And if you have a risk free solution for that then your client’s half problem is resolved!

100% agreed - hiding problems only bites you down the road, and long-term relationships require trust on both sides. If a client is completely intolerant of any bad news ever, they aren't going to be with you long anywahy. You can't control everything that happens in SEO.

Agree, Be upfront and stay positive. Have executable plans in mind and ways to fix the issue. Your clients are business people too and should understand the system is not an exact science but that you are doing everything you can for their cause!

Definitely, Dr. Pete. Some of my favorite clients haven't had completely smooth roads to success with their SEO campaigns, but at the end of the day, honesty and hard work prevailed, and both the client and I respect each other more because of it.

It is a strong point - no matter how good you are at SEO - you can't be in control of all the variables so inevitably sh*t will hit the fan at some point, even if it is a minor bump in an otherwise smooth road.

Good work Anthony though, it's nice to see someone being honest and admitting that SEO isn't always a walk through a sweet smelling meadow.

Dr. Pete is so right though, if the client won't be even a tiny bit tolerant of bad news then they're not really the kind of client you want on your books as you'll be driving yourself quite literally insane every month frantically ensuring there's no bad news or worse trying to cover over a problem.

Anthony Mangia thanks for nice article.Your every is very up to mark and should be followed by every webmaster if they really want to do a serious business.The forth point is one of the most important to adopt as if a person providing a SEO services and unable to explain the up and downs than it will show how unprofessional they are and having a good and absolute reason make whole different image a pure ethical one.

Well the best practice to avoid the bad situations is just educate your client about basic SEO and share each and every strategy with them and even explain the possible positive and negative effects of your strategy.And your last point manage expectation is the best one as promising for the 1st position never going to help you.I always prefer to show them improved statistics and KPI's this will encourage them to trust me and finally surprised them with rankings.

Break bad news to clients? When I have bad news for a client I just close up shop, change all my email accounts and forget I ever knew who they were.

Just kidding, but I do hear from a lot of clients that they experienced something similar. I can't tell you how many initial conversaions I have with a potential client that involves the phrase "I've already been burned once before, how are you any different?"

Find the best strategy is to give clients the pros and cons of SEO projects from the outset, therefore if things do go wrong, which they can do from time to time, either through bad luck or human error, it softens the blow.

Also usually encourage use of PPC, social networking, etc, in tandem with SEO, so if do have organic problems, can be offset by other sources of visits and vice versa.

Keeping the lines of communication open is the best way to prevent confusion and frustration later on in the partnership. Even with full disclosure, I've had clients tune me out and then get really angry when they don't see the results they were expecting. I try telling them that I had explained what might happen, but they don't want to hear it! Part of the client game I guess.

Great post. My question is about your point 'Have a proposed solution' though. In some cases (very rare, admittedly), the best course of action is to do nothing. For example if Google happens to be in the process of deciding where to rank a page and they put a competitor's above yours, it's tempting to panic and rush into changes, whereas often this is only a temporary shift in the rankings. How would you approach a client with bad news when the best course of action is no action at that given moment?

This post is a must-read for almost everyone. Very clear and well writen advices Anthony! And you managed to keep all short without any disctracting sentences. Well done mate, well done! I'm bookmakring this and I'll share it with all my friends.

Couldn't agree more with your view of transparency. I was going to say "transparency is the way forward" but it's more the case that it should've been a consideration all along, especially for freelancers, consultants and agencies (those working with clients).

After all, SEO isn't a transparent industry, so not to be transparent about your practices is very, very risky. And with more and more clients cutting costs these past years, I'm sure many would prefer honesty - good and bad - than only to hear about the great times. It's all about the client-agency relationship.

I believe it is important to tkae any client, regedless of the type of business, over the jumps so they are aware of the potential pitfalls.

By doing this, you are allowing the client to weigh and implement their own risk taking (or risk aversion) values in the course of action you are undergoing on thier behalf. If the undetaking falls short of expectations then the client will have a better understanding of what has happened and why, as well as some ownership of any misteps.

"Be transparent" is the most important thing. Also it is important to have a honest conversation with client beffore you sign the contract, especially if client don't know anything about SEO. Client are often know what to expect, but they don't know WHEN to expect. There is a lot of methods and some of them are on long term. So, the best way of approaching client during negotiations, and preventing eventually misunderstanding is to be transparent and suggest at least 6 month contract. You can negotiate about terms of paying and everything, but do not agree on a shorter term, beacuse it will be bad for you. Maybe results will become visible later, after you break cooperation.

Be transparent and be honest. Maybe you will get less number of clients (which don't means less money contract :) ), but you will have more loyal clients who knows what to expect from your services. Satisfied clients will recommend you to their friends. Unsatisfied clients won't recommend you to anyone...

I agree to you, reagrding the honesty , in SEO it's worth to be honest with the clients reagarding the problems(if it happens) if we try to hide a single problem from the client, there becomes the probability for the arrival of next problem and additionally the client's relationship gets towards the end.